


and sink to human shape

by QuickYoke



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angela "Mercy" Ziegler is an Angel, F/F, the terrifying old testament-esque kind of angel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-01-07 01:19:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12222828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuickYoke/pseuds/QuickYoke
Summary: She should have died on that mission, yet here she was -- good as new. A sort of "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" AU





	1. handfuls of stars

 

> "What I am giving you is nothing that belongs to me […] It is just yourself, you running through me throwing off sparks, your eyes blazing with fear, blazing with hope, I am giving you your own fire. All I do is breathe very gently on your night embers and handfuls of stars fly out."
> 
> — Hélène Cixous, _The Book of Promethea_

 

* * *

* * *

 

Afterwards, there was not even a scar. The cloth of Fareeha’s white undershirt brushed against her ribs. It still felt the same, the corded muscle beneath her skin, the twitch of life and limb. As she walked, she slipped her free hand beneath the worn leather of her jacket to spread her fingers against her flank, against the memory of her recent wounds, of ruptured armour and fraying circuitry casting sparks while she lay dying. Welter of blood and recollection. She shook her head, jerked her hand back to her side, clenched in a fist. She kept walking.

Her footsteps echoed down the long corridor, lined with thick panes of glass and bright flourescent lights at all hours of the day. Even now, when night cast over the sky with a bank of cloud and rain, the Helix Security International facilities at Ilios remained well lit. From the corner of her vision, Fareeha could see her own muddied reflection in the rain-lashed windows, but as always she glanced quickly away before she could dwell too long on her reflection, the glass revealing her eyes -- normally dark -- stinging with flame. She quickened her step. Mirrors saw too much.

Shifting her grip on the mug of fresh coffee in her hand, she did not shy from the heat pouring through industry-marked porcelain. The longer she walked, craning her neck to search the plaques outside each room, the more the coffee should have cooled in her hands, but by the time she found the room she sought, the coffee still burned as hot as the moment she had poured it back in the empty mess hall.

The door to the lab stood ajar, and inside the darkness hung thick as a curtain, stitched through with shadow. Hesitant, Fareeha pushed open the door somewhat to look inside, her gaze cutting through the gloom with ease. She was filled with irrational flights of panic -- _Perhaps she has already gone. Perhaps she was a dream. Perhaps some vivid nightmare_ \-- but then the breath Fareeha had been holding exhaled in a rush.

There, Angela sat. Her fingers typed away, lightning-quick, at a keyboard, while between her teeth she held a stylus, which she whipped free to scribble a few neat, hand-written notes directly on the translucent screen glowing softly before her. Even alone like this, she did not work so much as she composed, moving ceaselessly, switching with seamless grace between the computer and the stacks of paper strewn across her work bench, each motion controlled and precise, not a hair out of place.

As Fareeha knocked at the open door leading to Angela’s lab space, Angela straightened at her desk and glanced up with an automatic smile for whoever intruded on her space. She smiled with neither warmth nor chill, but rather with a vague, detached curiosity. She formed expressions as if from abstractions, carving pale mimicries upon her face. Fareeha watched her movements: the too-smooth straightening of her shoulders, the perfect curl of golden hair at the nape of her neck, and the absolute stillness that followed. Night had long since shrouded the complex in shadow and yet again Angela had forgotten to turn on the lights, continuing to work even as darkness fell, so that her eyes gleamed, piercing through the cloying black, too blue, too bright.

“Good evening, Fareeha,” she greeted, her voice a liquid glimmer of light across the surface of metal -- flashing bronze or rich copper. Her hair shone a gold so pale as to appear silver when Fareeha flicked on the lights near the door. Cocking her head towards the ceiling, Angela seemed to feign surprise. “Thank you, but that isn’t necessary.”

“I know.” Fareeha crossed to Angela’s desk and gestured with the cup of steaming coffee in one hand. “I thought you might like this. But if it isn’t necessary, I could leave -?”

At last something unaffected animated Angela’s features. Her gaze honed in on the mug in Fareeha’s hand, her movements sharp, exact, and hawkish. Immediately, Angela cleared some papers scattered across her desk. She set the ceramic ashtray on the ground, making space and gesturing towards the spare chair with a tilt of her head. “Please. Sit.”

The air smelled faintly of smoke. Where someone else might have shifted their expression, the muscles of Angela’s face remained fixed. She did not seem to need to blink, though at precise intervals she would do so, as if the action required conscious thought. Fareeha set down the cup on the bit of space provided, and sank into the chair. The steel frame dug into the backs of Fareeha’s thighs and shoulder blades; she shifted with discomfort and a few rivets gave a precarious creak beneath her.

Angela snatched up the coffee almost as soon as Fareeha had set it down. Six empty mugs, a crumpled foil wrapper of gourmet chocolates, and an empty cigarette pack already littered her desk, but she cradled this new offering between her hands, sinking back into her own cheap metal folding chair with a sigh of content. After a sip, Angela closed her eyes and hummed a wordless note in the back of her throat. “Wonderful.” She opened her eyes once more. “But somehow I doubt you’ve come just to bring me treats. How are you feeling?”

Fareeha shrugged. “I’m fine.”

It was not a lie. Angela would sense dishonesty, like a sleuthhound fixating on the scent of blood in the air. Warding off the weight of Angela’s scrutiny, Fareeha changed the topic abruptly, craning her neck and squinting at the papers. She jerked her chin towards the complex schematics. “What are you working on?”

Taking another longer drink of her coffee, Angela regarded Fareeha over the top of the mug, her stare intense and unblinking. Then, balancing the cup between her fingers, she said, “Helix Security has granted me access to some of their more cutting edge nanotechnology. I’m developing a new applicator for my biotic systems that doesn’t involve shooting someone point-blank with a gun.”

The last she said with a dry tone, which was -- as far as Fareeha could tell -- as close as Angela came to irritable.

With a rueful grin, Fareeha stretched out in her chair, crossing her legs at the ankle. “Still smarting about that after all this time?”

Angela’s face took on a stony cast, growing more guarded, more intractable, yet her eyes flashed. “I want to ensure my gifts are used responsibly. Your mother had no right to that prototype.”

Fareeha shrugged, her broad shoulders creaked against her leather jacket. “If it’s my mother you want to complain about, you’re preaching to the choir.”

“Four minutes fourteen seconds, and already with the religious puns?” Angela gave a theatrical sigh and sipped at her coffee. “You really must be feeling better.”

When Fareeha chuckled, Angela shared in the levity with a grin of her own, and in an instant it were as though no time had passed at all. As though Fareeha had not died and been dragged from the jaw of death mere days ago. As though she were still a teen, enamoured with Overwatch’s own personal seraph. As though Ana would stride through the door at any moment with an impish smirk and a wicked tale of her past misdeeds.

The slant of Angela’s smile relaxed somewhat, but the warmth did not touch her unwavering stare. “It’s good to see you again. Even under such circumstances.”

“Yeah.” Fareeha dropped her gaze. “I suppose I’m lucky your research brought you here.”

Angela lifted one of her shoulders in a half shrug. “Luck and Fate, they are twin faces of the same coin.”

With a derisive snort of laughter, Fareeha said, “You really think it was fate that brought you here? Just to save my life?”

“I never question an opportunity to help those in need.” She leaned forward and pointed around the mug at Fareeha. “Think of what good you have already done. Because of you, many priceless artifacts have eluded Talon’s grasp yet again. You should be proud of your work.”

The sudden earnestness of Angela’s words made Fareeha shift uncomfortably in her seat. She tucked her feet beneath the chair, sitting up straighter. “Well, it’s not Overwatch,” she shrugged. “But it could be worse. Helix Industries allows me to serve, where Overwatch only ever turned me away.”

“And you think we’re so different, you and I.” Angela shared a knowing look with Fareeha, as if the two of them were indulging in a secret. “The first opportunity to serve arises, and like that -!” she snapped her fingers. “- you leap!”

“That’s -!” Fareeha bit her tongue, her cheeks flushing. “That’s different.”

Angela laughed, and the sound was bronze-bright. “I mean it as a compliment, of course! I find your compulsion towards duty to be one of your many sterling qualities.”

Some irrational chamber of her heart seared, ember-bright, at Angela’s effortless, teasing honesty. At a glance, Angela flensed even the most dedicated masks, peeling back layer after effortless layer to reveal what lay beneath. Fareeha had spent so many years wrestling with her own nature -- two halves vying, clawing for primacy -- only for Angela to come along and strip that all away with a few words.

She should be grateful. She should be gracious. Instead, hands clenching into fists, Fareeha shot back, “And what of your ‘compulsions’?”

Rather than answer, Angela lifted the mug to her lips once more. Her eyes were veiled in reeds of aromatic steam. Her silence rankled.

“Why are you here?” Fareeha pressed.

Angela cocked her head in that practiced inquisitive gesture of hers, but her facial expression never altered. “With Overwatch disbanded, I have reached out to corporations like Helix Security International so that my work can better reach the hundreds of thousands of people that are in need of -”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” Fareeha interrupted. Angela fell silent, but did not speak. Rubbing at her eyes, Fareeha propped her elbows atop her knees and sighed. “Why are you _here?”_

Carefully, Angela set down the half-drunk mug of coffee. Wisps of steam curled around her wrist before she clasped her hands together atop the desk and leaned forward. Patient. Calm. Like she was going to explain a simple lesson to a child. “I came here because humanity fascinates me, and most of all because it is within my nature to succour those most in need. My kind were content to idly watch our Lord’s greatest creations wrought utter destruction upon themselves. That, I could not abide.”

“The view from Heaven must be nice,” Fareeha growled. “Looking down at all of us crawling in the mud and deigning to lend a helping hand.”

Angela remained as unflappable as ever, her tone mild and kind. “I did not come here to be humanity’s judge. I came here to be its saviour.”

“A saviour who won’t even show her true nature to the world.” Fareeha waved towards Angela’s appearance, her simple lab coat and dark-washed turtleneck, the rumpled cloth more an act of careless neglect that made her appear human -- Angela never could get the hang of banalities like ironing, no matter how long she’d been living among them. “You don’t fool anyone, you know. Not really.”

Angela continued to smile, unerring, unnerving. No matter how hard Fareeha tried, through all the years she had known Angela, nothing seemed to be able to crack through the surface of her uncanny poise. Sometimes, very rarely, Fareeha could have sworn she saw a flicker, a ripple stirring beneath, eddies of something teetering at the cliffside of humanity, peering down into the fathomless black of eldritch _other_ \-- when Angela took that first sip of scalding, black, over-sugared coffee; when Angela bit into a block of dark Lindt and Sprüngli chocolate; when Angela laid her hands over the wounded flank of a half-Djinn like Fareeha to pull her from the chasm of death and back into this mortal coil.

The coffee was going cold. The lengths of lazy steam made their slow retreat. Angela picked up the coffee to polish off what remained, and murmured around the lip of the mug, “I never thought you’d be the one to lecture me about hiding one’s true nature, Fareeha. That was always your mother’s hobby. But rest assured -” She finished the coffee and placed the empty cup beside the growing stack of others at her desk. “- I mask my appearance this way only to protect others.”

With a snort, Fareeha rolled her eyes. “Protect them from what?”

“Me.”

“But why here? Why now? I’ve already seen you. Glimpses of you, anyway.” When Angela had lashed Fareeha’s soul back to her body, Angela’s true form had glanced across her vision like the glance of sunlight across glass -- a face like ink-blackened starlight wreathed in a coronal eclipse, like planetary bodies colliding in a plume of purest light, radiant, lustrous, and burning. _Burning --_

How bright, how resplendent, how limned in flame. The mere memory made Fareeha’s chest clench with an unutterable ache.

“Show me,” Fareeha rasped, her eyes hard, her jaw setting to an unyielding line, for suddenly now more than ever the desperation to witness this phenomenon welled up in Fareeha’s throat, choking her. “I want to see you -- the real you.”

Angela went very still. “I don’t want to hurt you -”

“You won’t,” Fareeha insisted.

Angela fixed her with a gaze piercing and thunder-graven. “I will.”

“Did you show _her?”_ She didn't need to explain who. They both knew.

Again, that stony quality returned to Angela's face. “No. And she never asked.” When Fareeha’s teeth clenched, Angela clarified, “Because your mother was too proud. Not because she didn't want to.”

“Why -?” Fareeha choked on the word, unable to articulate the driving, gnashing ache she carried with each breath. She scrubbed her hands through her hair and looked away. Anywhere but at Angela, who, in the night, blazed like a beacon.

“Flame begets flame,” Angela answered with another of those cryptic replies she was so fond of. “Don't torture yourself over this. Part of you will always seek out some meaningful connection with other semi-divine beings. The other part, however -”

When Angela fell quiet, Fareeha lifted her gaze to find Angela watching her with a breathless sort of wonder.

“You're so lucky,” Angela said, “to be human. Cherish your life, Fareeha. I know I do.”

Fareeha rubbed at her eyes, at the dark circles beneath them. Finally, she sighed, “Thank you.”

Angela blinked. “For what?”

Brows drawing down, Fareeha gestured to her ribs, where not two days ago her lungs had gaped to the world, fluttering beneath her ribcage to the air like the flight of captured birds. “For my life. If you hadn’t been there during that Talon ambush -” Fareeha trailed off, not daring the finish the thought.

For the first time, Angela appeared genuinely taken aback. She stared, her expression verging on open, almost on human. Abruptly, she stood, rounding the table, crossing the space and dropping to her knees at the foot of Fareeha’s chair. Fareeha had to stifle the urge to jerk her hands away when Angela reached forward to clasp them between her own. Now, Angela did not look at her with faint, distant curiosity. Now, she knelt at Fareeha’s feet and gazed up with something like reverence shining in her eyes.

“Never thank me for that. Never,” Angela breathed. “The life I saved was yours. Don’t thank me for giving you something that belonged to you all along.”

Fareeha tried to speak, but all she could muster was a swallow against the dryness of her throat.

Angela ran her cool-skinned thumb across the backs of Fareeha’s knuckles, counting the warm notches of sinew and bone. “You ask me why I am here. This. This is why. This chance to save even one precious life from pain and death and injustice.” Bowing her head, she kissed the back of Fareeha’s hand, a brush of her mouth and the mist of breath over Fareeha’s wrist. “I'm so glad. I'm so glad I could save you. Never doubt that.”

Frozen in Angela’s grasp, Fareeha said, “That’s not what I doubt.”

Angela looked up and the grave sincerity of her words made her face sharpen all to dark edges, like the whetting of a blade. “The next time you find your faith begin to dwindle, the answers you seek need only be found in a mirror.”

She was close enough that Fareeha could count the fine downy hair threading gold at Angela’s temple, could swear on imperfections in Angela’s solemn eyes. Before good sense could catch her, Fareeha leaned forward and kissed her.

At first, Angela's mouth, like her touch, was a breath of cool air, but then heat rushed forth. Heat poured upon heat. A soft note sounded at the back of Angela’s throat, and Fareeha chased after the noise, after that indescribable warmth with a tilt of her head. For a fleet-footed moment -- perhaps Fareeha could have imagined it -- Angela’s mouth moved in tandem with hers, sharing fire between them.

With a sharp inhalation, Angela pulled away. Her eyes were wide, her cheeks uncharacteristically flushed, but she did not appear shocked. She searched Fareeha’s face like the blind dragging their hands over rough-hewn marble, seeking meaning in purchase. When she spoke, her voice had softened to a rasp. “Romantic attachment to me is not something I can, in good conscience, recommend.”

With a huff of watery laughter, Fareeha shook her head. “You’re about fifteen years too late for that.”

Angela rose to her feet, and for a brief panicked moment of uncertainty Fareeha feared she was going to turn and walk away, tell her to leave, tell her to give up on her childish whims and infatuations. But then Angela cupped her cheek, curled her fingers beneath Fareeha’s chin and tilted up. Her touch gentled against the bare skin of Fareeha’s jaw, yet still firm enough that Fareeha felt a creak of complaint in her neck.

“That long?” Angela murmured. She stroked the gap between Fareeha’s chin and lower lip, her gaze growing hooded and sharp. “You’re still so young.”

Fareeha couldn’t keep the defensive note from her voice. “I’ll outlive any human by at least a century or two.”

“Unless you fall at the hands of your own kind. Human or otherwise -- you’re all so quick to turn to the sword.”

Fareeha managed a grin. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”

Angela hummed a wordless contemplative note in the back of her throat, tracing Fareeha’s face with her eyes. “Even I have my limits.”

“And I thought you were perfect,” Fareeha joked weakly.

Gaze flashing, brow darkening, Angela smiled and her teeth gleamed, even and white. “Oh, no, no. I have many faults. More than you can imagine. I am many things. Sublime. Transcendental. The embodiment of the fire of charity, of mercy, and of glory. But perfect?” Her hand trailed down, scraping the nail of her thumb against the column of Fareeha’s throat. Fareeha swallowed, and Angela’s eyes burned in kind. “I’m not the one made in God’s image.”

As Fareeha looked up at her, Angela's head blotted out the ceiling light, so that her hair burned bright along the edges. In a whisper, Fareeha said, “And maybe I'm not the one who needs a mirror.”

Angela’s mouth turned up at the corners in a wry smile. She cupped Fareeha’s face with both hands and, leaning forward, brushed her mouth over Fareeha’s hairline in a chaste kiss. When she pulled away, her hands lingered on Fareeha’s cheeks before she lowered them to her side. “I should get back to work, and you should get some rest. I hear you have a mission debriefing tomorrow.”

Frowning, Fareeha watched Angela walk, not back to the chair behind the desk, but towards the door to see her out. Fareeha rose to her feet and followed. “How do you know about that? You’re not military.”

Angela waggled her hand in a whimsical little wave over her shoulder. “People talk.”

Fareeha gave an incredulous grunt.

With a flutter of soft laughter, Angela asked, “Do you really find it so strange that people would seek my counsel?”

“Counsel? Or confessional?” Fareeha countered dryly.

Stopping in the doorway, Angela cocked her head. “You tell me.”

To that, Fareeha could make no reply. Her footsteps faltered to a halt. Her mouth went dry. Angela was a silhouette drenched all in light. In the harsh glare from the hallway, Fareeha could just make out the hazy shadow of feathered wings branching from the crux of Angela’s shoulders, blurred and vaporous as a mirage, like a vision spied by desert mystics as it slouched across the blistering sands.

“Thank you for the coffee. Until next time, Fareeha.” She smiled, and her eyes burned like the glimmer of the cold and distant void. “Be well.”

 

* * *

 

The next day, both her executive officer and her commanding officer attended the debriefing. Ten military personnel crowded around a table bearing the Helix Industries logo in the meeting room. Paper cups of tea and coffee lined the table, and at the opposite end a projector streamed a blank white light onto the wall in the otherwise dim room. Seated at the head of the table, the commanding officer, Air Commodore Youssef Elfar, stirred a packet of sugar into his coffee, swirling a dollop of milk into the mix. He looked about as tired as Fareeha felt, if the bags under his eyes were any indication.

“Lieutenant Amari,” he began, pausing to sip at his paper cup. Grimacing at the taste, he reached for another packet of sugar. “It is my understanding that we are here to go over the events that transpired on the 23rd of September 2075 at a Helix Industries archaeological dig site on the island of Ilios. Exact location: Anastasi Church, 36.4319° N, 25.4223° E.”

He stopped again to take a drink of his coffee, and this time seemed satisfied, for he leaned back in his chair. Pulling a report from the table in front of him so that it perched on the edge of the table, he reviewed it rather than look at where Fareeha stood to the side, awaiting whatever outcome would be decided.

“At approximately 1400 hours, you and your squad -- stationed to oversee protection of the dig -- were ambushed by agents of the terrorist group known as Talon. During this ambush, your squad was believed to have sustained three casualties of military personnel, including yourself, before the arrival of ex-Overwatch S.F.A., Dr. Angela Ziegler. Talon was pushed back, but not before stealing multiple artifacts and destroying what remained of the site. Is this correct?”

Her hands were clasped behind her back. Her uniform starched and crinkling when she moved. “Yes, sir.”

Elfar tossed the debriefing notes onto the table with a light slap of paper. “Lieutenant Amari, based on your experience of the incident and to the best of your knowledge, can you give us an idea of what transpired after you were hit?”

Fareeha started to speak, but had to clear her throat before she could croak, “No, sir.”

His bushy eyebrows rose, and he tapped thoughtfully at his cup of coffee. “No?” he repeated. “And why is that?”

“I don’t -” Fareeha took a deep breath. “I don’t remember everything clearly.”

“Well, what do you remember?” Elfar drained his cup and was about to lean forward to pour himself another, when a junior officer did so instead. He grunted, “Thank you, Amr.”

The white screen projection maintained a steady flow of light onto the wall, casting the faces of her officers in a ghostly glow. Fareeha swallowed and eyed the coffee askance.

“Oh, sit down, won’t you?” Elfar sighed. He kicked one of the chairs towards her. “Have some caffeine. You still look half-dead, Lieutenant.”

“Thank you, sir.” Fareeha lowered herself into the seat. Amr handed her one of the flimsy paper cups with a smile that was meant to put her at ease, but when she tried to return it with one of her own, her face felt plasticky. The lukewarm coffee hit her tongue with an over-brewed acidity. She gulped it down regardless.

“I remember -” she began unsteadily, focusing on the cup in her hands rather than the nine inquisitive faces turned towards her, watching, waiting. “I remember the initial blast from the east. They hit the tents first. I got half of my squad up as fast as I could for air superiority. The other half I sent to investigate and protect any civilians in the area. I didn’t get more than a few metres above the ground before I was hit. And then -”

With a helpless shrug, Fareeha trailed off.

Elfar sucked at the backs of his teeth. Then he raised his hand, snapping his fingers in the direction of the projector. “Can we pull the helmet feed from the moment she’s hit?”

“Yes, sir,” one of the junior officers answered.

Elfar nodded towards the wall. “Do it.”

A blank sort of horror washed over Fareeha then, as an image flickered to life on the wall. She could see her own feet dangling, while below her the ground began to retreat. Tents burned along the left side of the video, figures racing, limping. An eruption staggered the feed, and the air was filled with her sharp cry of pain. She fell. After she crashed back down to earth and lay bleeding out, all the camera could see was the sloping creep of blood along the ground and the sparks leaping at her fingertips. In the background, chaos. The yells of her squad mates fighting against Talon. The bellow of gunshots and explosions along the perimeter of the dig as Talon attempted to gather or otherwise destroy whatever archaeological evidence Helix Industries was digging up on Ilios.

Then silence -- but for Fareeha's own ragged breathing.

The crunch of footsteps along the ground. Black boots rounded the corner and into the camera's field of view. When Fareeha's voice whimpered on the feed, the figure paused, turned, drew closer.

“Don't touch her!”

A familiar voice -- Angela’s voice -- thundered from somewhere distant and muddied, yet growing closer. The boots on screen froze, their owner going tense but not retreating as another set of feet alighted upon the ground from above. Angela was wearing a pair of summery Graecian sandals. Leather criss-crossed over her bare ankles and calves. Specks of sand dusted her toes. She must have been enjoying the beach when she’d heard the commotion across the island.

“Fancy seeing you here, Doc,” a voice said, a low gravelly growl, wisped through with echoes of shadow like the thrum of water at the bottom of a well. “Last I heard you were still meddling in Lucerne.”

Angela’s reply sounded harsh, sharp as the crack of a whip. “What are you doing here?”

“Enjoying the sights.”

“There is nothing for you here. Leave, now.”

“I wasn’t talking about Ilios.”

The feed went quiet as Angela weighed his words. In the video, Fareeha’s extended arm twitched as she gasped, blood throttling the back of her throat. She coughed and the camera shuddered, the lens flecked with dark liquid spots, like streaks of red ink.

“What do you want from me?” Angela asked.

“My life. _Your_ life.”

“Gabriel, I -”

The crack of a gunshot, and a shotgun shell clattered to the ground, trailing a thread of smoke. It rolled lazily through the pool of Fareeha’s blood before coming to a rest at the trembling curl of her fingers. Angela staggered back a step, but did not fall. After a moment her knees straightened once more and when she spoke, the feed fuzzed over with static, her voice barely legible through the burr of noise. “Even if you could, killing me won’t solve anything. This is not the answer you seek.”

“We’ll just see about that. You and your kind? You’re a blight on this world.”

“I only came to help.”

“The way you helped me?”

A pained note entered Angela’s voice, and she took a step forward only to stop, as though she had reached out in an abortive motion before catching herself or being deflected. “What happened to you was -!” She sounded unnerved, desperate. “I never meant for any of this! You were too far gone, but still I had to try! You must believe me!”

“You should have left me.”

“You don’t understand! I couldn’t!”

“Oh, I understand. Let this one die, Doc. Let her go.”

_“I can’t!”_

“The dead,” he snarled, “should be left well alone.”

Ash and shadow gathered at his feet, and in a whirl of smoke he vanished.

Without hesitation, Angela whirled around and dropped to her knees. Hands on Fareeha’s shoulders and despite the heaviness of the armoured raptor suit, Angela turned her over with ease. The camera lurched, careening round before facing up, tilted towards the sky beyond, revealing Angela’s panicked expression. A gold circlet glinted at her neck.  

Angela cradled Fareeha in her arms. Her white dress smeared with blood. With a shaking hand, Fareeha reached up to try to touch her, but Angela stopped her hand with a firm touch to her wrist. Angela's eyes seared like the sun at dawn and the camera feed flickered, straining and snapping to contain her image. Through it all, the brightness flared until Angela’s outline burnt away to a six-winged silhouette.

“I'm here,” she said, her voice crackling and seething to abyssal depths, her face splitting open, her chest rending itself in twain. “I've got you.”

Fire, and wings, and an incandescent gaze. Static roared across the feed, a blackening of raw noise. The camera lens shattered, and all went dark.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) S.F.A stands for “Supernatural Field Agent”
> 
>  
> 
> 2) Anastasi Church, 36.4319° N, 25.4223° E. is actually a church located on Santorini
> 
>  
> 
> 3) The title is a reference to Louise Glück’s 'Hyacinth':
> 
> “There were no flowers in antiquity
> 
> but boys’ bodies, pale, perfectly imagined.
> 
> So the gods sank to human shape with longing.
> 
> In the field, in the willow grove,
> 
> Apollo sent the courtiers away.”


	2. the scorching glass

 

> _“I sought my image_
> 
> _in the scorching glass,_
> 
> _for what fire could damage_
> 
> _a witch’s face?”_
> 
> _-Sylvia Plath, from ‘On Looking Into The Eyes Of A Demon Lover’_

 

* * *

* * *

 

“I’m just sayin’, Gabe -- it’s ok if I call you ‘Gabe’, right? You know what? Don’t answer that. I’m just going to call you ‘Gabe.’ Anyway, I’m just sayin’, there’s something fishy about all this. I mean, we show up on Ilios and Dr. Ziegler just so happens to be there? And even you can’t kill her? I thought you could kill anything!”

Reaper did not answer, though his wordless grumble of anger and disgust was about as much as Sombra could expect from him. A conversationalist Reaper was not. Even in life, he had hoarded words behind his teeth like priceless treasures, speaking only to deliver an acrid retort to any cameraman daring enough to shove a recording device in his face. Normally, the footage ended with Blackwatch Agent Reyes knocking the camera to the ground and crushing it beneath his boot, along with some comment about _‘Jack, the Poster Boy.’_ Nowadays, recording devices tended to go a bit haywire in his presence. It had taken Sombra a solid week to create a comm link that allowed him to transmit a message of any legibility on a mission. To say nothing of her own experiments with cameras.

“Right. Not for lack of trying.” Sombra grabbed the handle of one of the shotguns at his waist, tugging it free before he could protest. She grunted at the weight of it, having to use both hands to aim down its sights, pointing it down the hallway as they walked. A student crossing their paths blanched and scurried out of the way. “How the hell do you even handle these things? Did you line them with lead or something?”

Without answering, he snatched the shotgun from her, tucking it back into the holster. Where he touched the firearms, his gloved hands bled with dark red-streaked smoke, and Sombra crinkled her neon-painted nose against the stench of sulphur that slithered in his footsteps.

Sombra let him take it back without a struggle. “I thought Moira fixed up your weapons real good? Swore blue and blind they could take down a charging bull or whatever.”

“Yes,” Reaper hissed. “Yes, she did.”

He walked with an eerie silence, broken only by the slight clink of metal against polished sandstone. It was like walking beside a suit of body armour animated by black smoke. Sombra had read his file -- she’d read every file about Talon personnel she could get her hands on -- and she’d seen pictures of various stages of his transformation throughout the years, but he had yet to take off his mask in her presence. Sombra wasn’t about to complain, either. He could keep it on, thanks.

Together the two of them strode through the arched halls of Oasis’ prestigious University. Blue-tinged black lights accented the various architectural features, and every time Sombra passed beneath them, her flourescent body paint flared bright as a scratched match. Here, she was almost visible to the naked eye, but after every archway she faded into obscurity once more. The gaze of a rare passerby only found her because of the clothes and paint she adorned herself with, the rest of her body remaining imperceptible.

Sombra tugged at the asymmetrical line of her jacket, unused to being seen in any capacity without her explicit permission. “The sooner we make the drop off and get out of here, the better.”

“Moira will want a report,” Reaper said. “And we can’t leave without Widowmaker.”

“Ugh.” Sombra rolled her eyes, even though Reaper wouldn’t be able to see the gesture. She had to exaggerate her body language and vocal inflections to make her irritation known. “We could have just given her the report electronically, and then met up with Amélie on the next mission. Technology exists for a reason, you know.”

Gabe’s answering chuckle was dark and echoing. “You’re afraid of her.”

“Of Amélie? Don’t be stupid. Her infra-red vision can only take her so far. She can’t see who’s sneaking up behind her.”

“No. Not her.” Gabe’s face was obscured by his mask, but Sombra could have sworn he was grinning. _“Moira.”_

Sombra opened her mouth to retort, only to close it without saying anything. She had met Moira in person enough times to be counted on one hand, and even that was too many for Sombra’s comfort. “I just don’t like this place,” she lied.

Any hint of amusement vanished when Gabe next spoke. “Just bite your tongue and let me handle everything.”

“Yeah, I’ve never been good at that.”

At the door to Moira’s office, they stopped. Reaper jammed his finger against a backlit panel along the wall.

Nobody responded.

Holding the button down, Reaper growled, “Moira, let us in.”

Silence.

Sombra rolled her eyes. “Move over.” She shoved Reaper out of the way with her shoulder. The panel’s glow flashed from blue to a vibrant pink at Sombra’s touch, and in a few seconds the door was sliding soundlessly open. Sombra gave a theatrical bow and gestured for him to enter. “ _Pásele_.”

He passed by without a word of thanks. She followed him inside, and the door shut behind them. The laboratory circled round in a ring shape, every surface clean, gleaming, and crowded with experimentations. Glass flasks boiling like strange cauldrons. Robotic appendages hanging from the ceiling in lieu of fixtures. White mice and red-eyed hares scratching at the walls of their glass cages. Light flooded the area, leaving no corner untouched.

To one side of the room, Amélie Lacroix hung suspended in a tank of gold-tinged fluid, percolating with a steady stream of bubbles that slowly rose to the surface, seven feet above the floor. Her eyes were closed. Her long hair flowed loose and unbound around her face. In the yellow light, her bluish skin appeared a pale and ghostly green. A mask was affixed to the lower half of her face, strung with a long tube that coiled around the tank like a serpent. The glass was misted to preserve whatever shreds of decency Amélie had left.

Moira herself sat enshrined at a desk in the centre of her laboratory. She had her feet propped up on a corner of the table. In one hand she held a sliver of glass that acted as a personalised tablet, upon which she read an article. The other hand was taking notes with honest to God pen and paper, the likes of which Sombra hadn’t seen since her childhood, when Mexico was still plunged in a technological dark age thanks to the omnics. The skin of Moira’s right hand was a mottled purplish colour, struck through with bulging veins. Once, Sombra’s fingers had brushed against Moira’s when passing over a wriggling mouse that had escaped from its cage, and a shudder of disgust had crawled up her arm at the feel of cold and clammy skin.

If Moira was aware Reaper and Sombra had entered the room, she did not show it. Beneath the glaring halogen lights, her hair was burnished to a lustrous copper, her face stark and pale. Her sleek head remained bowed, wholly engrossed in her present task. Before either of them could speak, Moira growled, “I’m working.”

“We can see that,” Sombra quipped, stepping around Moira’s desk and approaching the wall behind her, where an old-fashioned translucent whiteboard stood at an angle. “Still busy making an altar to the good doctor?”

Moira did not look up as she replied, “Idolatry is an offense I take very seriously.”

“Then maybe you should stop making flower crowns and drawing little hearts around Dr. Ziegler’s pictures.” Sombra squinted at the board filled with more of Moira’s hand-written notes. Indeed, a picture of Dr. Ziegler had been affixed in the middle, linked to a portrait of Reaper via a complex network of twisting lines, a spider’s web of multiple double-helix strands interwoven to create a patchwork quilt of genetic nonsense impossible to parse without at least two doctorates under one’s belt. A similar network linked a portrait of Gabe to one of Amélie, though this helix structure was undeniably simpler. It lacked the two extra pieces that Dr. Ziegler’s helix contained, denoted by the Greek letters: α and ω.

When Sombra reached out to touch the board, tracing the Greek letters with one finger, Moira said, “I’ll thank you not to smudge your paints on my research.”

Sombra scowled, but something in Moira’s tone made her lower her hand regardless.

A few more moments passed, during which the only sounds in the room were the scratching of Moira’s pen against paper and the bubbling of the tank. Sombra was about to clear her throat pointedly, when finally Moira spoke. “What do you have for me?”

Sombra looked at Gabe, who nodded. Reaching into her pocket, Sombra tossed a translocator onto another one of Moira’s nearby workstations. A small light blinked rapidly on the translocator, followed by the sudden materialisation of loot from their latest mission at the Ilios dig. A plume of dust rose into the air from the heap of artifacts, priceless relics, vestiges of an age long past. Sombra coughed and waved her hand.

For the first time since they entered, Moira glanced up from her work. She arched an eyebrow at the assortment of artifacts. “Is this supposed to appease me?”

“Is that even possible?” Sombra shot back.

In reply, Moira hummed a non-committal note in the back of her throat, but made no further comment. Her facial expression did not shift. No matter how hard Sombra tried, she couldn’t get a read on her, as though more often than not Moira forgot she had a face at all. Sombra scowled in irritation, and though she hadn’t painted her brows or forehead, Moira’s gaze followed the invisible furrow between her eyes.

Turning back to her article with an air of disinterest, Moira dragged her thumb along the glass to scroll to a new page. “And what of the Weapon?”

Reaper stepped forward to answer. “Unable to be secured.”

“That’s two missions you’ve failed with our newest recruit at your side,” Moira murmured, scribbling away at her notebook in a neat cramped hand. “I’m starting to think there’s a correlation forming between these data points.”

Sombra bristled at the implication. “I might be able to help if you actually told me what this super Weapon is.”

“You mean you haven’t managed to glean that information from my systems? Shocking,” Moira drawled. “Or perhaps the legendary Sombra isn’t as grand as she would have the world believe.”

Furious, Sombra planted both hands atop Moira’s desk, making sure she left smears of paint across some of her precious hand-written notes. No matter how much Sombra tried to tower over her however, Moira simply cocked her head and studied her with an apathetic stare. Sombra even rose up on her toes in attempt to heighten the effect, to no avail.

“I’m the real deal. Bona fide. You name it, and I can hack it. I’ll be the first to admit that the screw up at Volskaya Industries was my bad, but this one wasn’t even my fault!” Sombra jabbed a finger in Gabe’s direction. “ _El Rey_ over here dragged me away the moment your precious doctor showed up before I had the chance to do anything. I could've taken her!”  

Moira’s expression rarely changed, but now her face could only be described as amused. She held her mouth at a cruel slant, curling up at the corners. Her eyes however, remained fixed and unblinking. Slowly swinging her feet back down to the ground, Moira placed her tablet, pen, and pad of paper aside. She propped her elbows atop the table, and her chin atop her folded hands, looking more than ever like a great snake coiled upon itself. It was as close as Moira had ever come to smiling, and Sombra wasn’t sure she liked it.

“And what, pray tell -” Moira positively purred, “-would you have done when faced with the likes of Angela Ziegler?”

“A hell of a lot more than your shit weapons did, that’s for sure,” Sombra snapped. “Everyone has a weakness that can be exploited, even supernaturals. The trick is finding it.”

There was no doubt about it now. Moira was smiling, and Sombra was definitely one hundred percent certain she didn’t like it. The effect was chilling, as though Moira were wearing a mask, one of those theatrical Greek ones meant to be a caricature of emotion, as though humanity was something Moira had to fake, to wear, to don every morning like a pair of ill-fitting trousers. Moira bared her teeth, and for a split second the lights of the laboratory all dimmed so that her eyes burned through the gloom, one coal-bright and the other star-cold.

“You talk of weaknesses as though they actually apply to her. What you fail to realise is that any flaws she may possess do not extend into the physical realm. That you think you could harm her in any real capacity -- well!” Moira chuckled, a dark and throaty sound that made the back of Sombra’s neck prickle with unease. “It’s like a shard of glass dreaming it can cut diamond.”

Sombra frowned at Moira, who picked up her pen once more and was beginning to write as though the conversation were already finished. Supernaturals were one thing; Sombra could deal with the likes of them, no problem. So far, the only beings Sombra had never been able to learn the mysteries of during all her years of sleuthing were in some peripheral manner or another related to Angela Ziegler and Moira O’Deorain. Sombra glanced towards the board, where Dr. Ziegler’s portrait stemmed to Reaper and on to Widowmaker, then she glanced back to Moira, who was writing in a language Sombra had yet to discern. The internet and all her contacts therein couldn’t crack the arcane symbols with which Moira wrote, no matter their expertise.

Talon’s firewall hadn’t been a walk in the park, but it wasn’t exactly Helix Security International either. In fact, the only aspect of Talon’s information Sombra had been unable to access had to do with Moira’s work and personal records. Mostly due to the fact that Moira -- paranoid to a fault -- seemed to keep everything genetically encrypted or otherwise hand-written. Sombra prided herself on her general audacity, but even she hesitated to steal documentation from directly under Moira’s nose. Even when Sombra wasn’t wearing her paints -- making herself invisible to all -- Moira’s eyes never failed to track her movements, no matter the situation. And after smuggling a scrap of Moira’s discarded notes to a professor at the University of Chicago only to find that he’d hung himself a week later, leaving every inch of his office walls scrawled with eldritch symbols, Sombra had stopped trying to steal anything. For now, anyway.

“What is she, really?” Sombra asked.

“There are darknesses in life, and there are lights,” Moira said. The pen slowed its movements across the page. Something on the brink of awe and fury flickered across Moira’s face. After a pause, Moira continued, “She is one of the lights. The light of all lights.”

Sombra groaned, “Not you, too.” Pinching the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger, she sighed. “I thought scientists didn’t put stock in that conspiracy theory bullshit.”

“Science is a tool; it does not preclude belief. And believe me when I say: there’s more to this than meets the eye. Given your unique condition,” Moira added, “I would’ve thought that, at least, was something you understood.”

Glaring, Sombra crossed her arms and looked at Reaper. “You can back me up any time now, _güey.”_

Swinging his head in Sombra’s direction for a brief glower, Reaper stepped forward. He drew the shotguns from their holsters and tossed them directly atop Moira’s desk, where they clattered. “You told me the new modifications could kill anything,” he said.

Moira sneered at the dents his weapons had made on the surface of her desk. Using the pen, she nudged one of them out of the way so that she could flip over a page in her notebook and continue writing. “I told you they could stop anything in its tracks. They weren’t designed to kill Angela, or even seriously maim her. Only to give her pause and give you enough time to escape, should the need arise. Judging by your presence, I’d say they performed their part admirably, which is more than I can say for you.” As if bored, Moira tapped away at her tablet with one hand. Scanning a few lines, she said, “If doing any lasting damage to her is what you want, you don’t have a prayer.”

“I never was the praying type,” Reaper said. “And I don’t see the point in starting now.”

“Perhaps you should,” Moira murmured. She lowered the tablet and fixed Reaper in place with the intensity of her gaze. Her lip curled, “It would certainly have more effect. Angela never could resist a good spectacle of penitence.”

“I’m not the one who needs to repent,” Reaper snarled. He had about as much luck as Sombra at looming over Moira.

That detached sense of amusement had returned, and a cold light sparked in Moira’s varicoloured eyes. “Oh, don’t worry. Her self-flagellation over your fate is doing far more damage than you could ever hope to mete.”

Reaper slammed a fist atop Moira’s desk, sending a cascade of sparks and wisps of smoke curling from its charred surface. Sombra jumped, but Moira merely raised a dispassionate eyebrow at the blackened crater he’d left on her desk.

“We made a deal,” he hissed. Tines of ink-dark mist coiled from the bone-like features of his mask. “I want her dead. I want all of them dead.”

“Then you should have brought me the Weapon.” Moira clucked her tongue, a series of rapid staccato tsks against the back of her teeth, and tipped her pen in Reaper’s direction as if wagging her finger, admonishing a naughty child. “I told you not to go alone.”

“Yet you conveniently withhold my back-up.” Reaper gestured at Widowmaker, floating unconscious in the tank.

“Hey! What am I?” Sombra grumbled. “Chopped liver?”

Moira ignored her in favour of brushing some ash from her notepad. “Madame Lacroix was in need of a check-up.”

Reaper looked in Amélie’s direction, and though his face could not be seen, the gesture held a distinct air of incredulity. “You and I have very different views on what a check-up is.”

“And yet only one of us here is qualified to have an opinion on the matter,” Moira countered, her tone dry.

“She was fine,” Reaper insisted.

“She went rogue and shot you in the back of the head, Gabriel.”

“I lived.”

“To say you are _‘living’_ is perhaps stretching the limits of the word’s definition.”

While Moira and Reaper traded verbal blows, Sombra sloped away from Moira’s desk and towards the tank. The fluid bubbled, rich as an alchemist’s brew. Sombra leaned forward to more closely study the information being portrayed directly upon the curved glass, complex symbols and figures that she would have given a figurative arm to understand, or even be able to download. A red line, like a narrow thread, leapt in a slow steady sinus rhythm across one section of the glass. Sombra touched the line with her finger, and the readings spiked.

Amélie’s eyes opened wide, staring directly down at her through the glass. With a yelp, Sombra scrambled back. The muscles of Amélie’s legs and arms began to twitch, and she reached up, movements sluggish through the bath of gold-infused liquid, in an attempt to tear the tube from her throat.

Sombra bumped into someone, and she jerked away as if burned. Moira hadn’t made a sound as she stood and crossed the room to join Sombra beside the tank. The air around her reeked with the smell of scorched sulphur. Moira towered, blade-thin and taller even than Reaper himself. The golden light of the tank gilded the mask shielding one half of her face, metal hiding scarred skin beneath. This close, Sombra could see the barest hint of the scar’s shape along the edge of the mask, as if of claw marks or perhaps the blow of an open hand.

Reaching out one long arm, Moira calmly pressed a section of the tank, which lit up at her touch like a button. “Don’t tap the glass,” she said. “It disturbs the patient.”

Immediately, Amélie’s movements slowed, then ceased. Her eyes closed and her body went slack as whatever drugs Moira had administered took effect.

“What’s -” Sombra cleared her throat to compose herself. “What’s wrong with her?”

Cocking her head, Moira said, “Her original genetic reformation was not as successful as I had originally hoped, and a few complications have arisen because of it.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean in real terms?” Sombra asked.

“Beneath the façade of Widowmaker, Amélie Lacroix is fighting. She needs to be reminded of her place in the grand scheme of things.” Slanting her gaze at Sombra, Moira added, “Like some others I might mention.”

Sombra held up her hands. “Pass.”

Moira always had the unpleasant perception that she was giving to whomever she spoke her fullest attention. Now was no exception. She watched Sombra as though seeing her -- truly seeing her, down to every atomic detail -- with the kind of critical scrutiny that said she didn’t like what she saw. She drew closer, her gaze clinical and cutting as a scalpel. “You should reconsider my offer. I could reverse your anomalous condition, if you let me.”

Sombra leaned back. _“Vieja,_ if you think I’m going to let you experiment on me like one of your guinea pigs, you need a reality check.”

“Reality is what I make it,” Moira said, her voice low and firm.

“Easy to say when you stay shacked up in your ivory tower, twenty-four seven.” Sombra said with a wave towards the walls. “I did my time as a lab rat, okay? Never again. I’m done.”

Moira shrugged and stepped away. “Suit yourself.”

Sombra only breathed easy again when Moira’s attention turned elsewhere. Moira’s presence cottoned to every surface like a second skin, corrosive as an oil-slick across water. Sombra  shivered and dreamed of a hot shower. With lots of soap. Industrial strength.

Walking over to her desk, Moira sat in the high-backed throne-like laboratory chair. It tilted as she leaned back to prop her feet up once more. “I’ve made further progress with Vishkar through my Ministry contacts. They’re desperate to get into Oasis. I need you to engage with one of their architects, Satya Vaswani. Bring her into the fold, so to speak.”

“I’ve got bigger fish to fry.” Reaper jerked his head in Sombra’s direction. “Send her.”

“What?” Sombra said.

“An excellent idea,” Moira agreed.

 _“What?”_ Sombra said again.

Reaper nodded towards the tank. “When will she be ready? I want to head out as soon as possible.”

“When you leave, I’ll finish her check-up and send her on her way,” Moira answered.

“Hold on! Hold on!” Sombra waved her arms to get their attention. “Let’s all go back to the part about sending Sombra off to Vishkar alone! And then to the part just before that where we were all complaining about a lack of backup!”

Moira rolled her eyes. “It’s a negotiation, not pistols at dawn. Do you need someone to hold your hand for a cup of _masala chai_ and some light conversation?” Pulling out a drawer, Moira rummaged around in her desk. She withdrew a folder and held it out to Sombra. “Here.”

Sombra took it, careful so that their fingers did not touch. “What is it?”

“A mission briefing and Satya Vaswani’s file.”

Making a face, Sombra tilted the folder between her hands, rustling the pages. “Can’t you just use e-mail like everyone else?”

Moira glared and shut the drawer with a resounding click. “No.”

There were straws, and there were camels, and then there was Moira O’Deorain. Sombra could only take so much in one day.

“Alright. That’s it. I’m out of here.” Sombra threw her hands up in the air, still holding onto the file, and started towards the door. She paused to look over her shoulder at Reaper. “You comin’, boss?”

In answer, smoke gathered at Reaper’s feet. The floor seethed with shadow, and darkness swallowed him whole, so that Sombra was left alone in the room with Moira.

“Thanks for nothing,” Sombra grumbled under her breath. Moira was watching her over her steepled fingers with that disconcertingly unwavering stare of hers. Sombra edged closer towards the door. “So...uh...Later!”

“Sombra?”

Freezing, Sombra considered making a run for it, but instead turned to face her. “Yo.”

For a moment, Moira simply tapped her fingertips together, long painted nails clicking. Then she said, “We learn from our failures, not our successes. Three failures in a row however, would imply to me a systemic issue.”

Sombra’s mouth went dry. She tried to put on airs of nonchalance, waving Moira’s concern aside, even as she backed away until her elbow nudged the door frame. “ _Tranquila!_ I’ve got this! Like you said: it’s just a cup of tea and some -- what do you call it? ‘ _Blarney’_ , right?”

Moira’s eyes narrowed and she did not respond.

Clearing her throat, Sombra opened the door, said, “Ok. Good talk!” in a forced, overly cheery tone, and slipped away. When the door slid shut behind her, she breathed a sigh of relief.

A prickle walked its fingers along the track of her spine, like the drag of a needle over skin, as though Moira were still watching through layers of reinforced tungsten. She shrugged away the memory of Moira’s gaze, and walked down the hall. Breaking into the first locked room she found took all of six seconds. The darkened room loomed with assorted laboratory equipment. Sombra left the lights out, bringing up a screen in the air with a wave of her hand that emanated a soft glow. A few quick taps of her fingers, and a live feed from the bug she had planted on one of the artifacts came to life.

Records of both Moira and Angela went back for decades. Sombra had dug up as many of them as she could get her hands on, and still the two remained a mystery. In all of the photographs and videos Moira had made past appearances, the camera seemed to conveniently blur over her image, as though Moira were caught in constant motion. No matter the year or quality of equipment, her face and limbs were a smear of pixels, her voice a rough burr beyond the fluid quality of her Irish brogue. The microphones crackled when she spoke, as though straining to contain the sheer immensity of her words. The clearest image Sombra had been able to find dated back to 2039, nearly forty years ago. In it, Moira was turning to glance over her shoulder; she looked exactly the same as she did now, but for the fact that she wore no mask and bore no scars upon her face.

Sombra had never admitted defeat before, and she wasn’t about to start now. In the name of mission comms, she had calibrated her own equipment on Reaper, who had the same uncanny ability to avoid the detection of cameras and microphones, though to a lesser degree. Not that she’d asked him to help, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Much.

In the lab down the hall, the camera lens peered through a framework of relics, and Moira was draining the tank. A bit of blurred pixelation still distorted Moira around the edges, so that she did not move across the screen so much as glide. As the golden fluid trickled away, Amélie slumped along with it until she lay on the floor of the tank. Moira pressed a button, and the glass sank down into the ground, vanishing from sight.

Moira crouched down, so that only her back was visible to the lens. Before she could reach out and undo the mask, Amélie jerked into consciousness. Rearing back, Amélie pushed herself to her knees. Her hands shook as she tore at the mask, eyes wide and wild.

“Stop struggling.” Moira tried to still her actions with a hand to her wrist, but Amélie wrenched away. Amélie’s fingers continued to scrabble at the clasps of the mask behind her head. Her feet lashed out, kicking against the rail along the base of the tank, hard enough to create a dent in the metal.

“I said: _stop struggling.”_

The camera feed fuzzed over at the edges. The mic crackled. Shadows gathered at the corners of the screen. Moira's voice went dark and slithering, every syllable a sibilant hiss, the same way Reaper sounded when he went full smoke form. Immediately, Amélie's struggles ceased, and soon after the footage righted itself again.

“Much better,” Moira murmured. Carefully, she reached around Amélie and undid the mask. Amélie choked and gagged as a long tube affixed to the mask was pulled from her throat. Placing it aside, Moira said, “I’d hoped to do this before you awoke, though your resilience to the anaesthesia is an excellent sign. You should be pleased.”

After retching up a surge of gold-tinged bile on the floor of the tank, Amélie swore at her in a long vibrant stream of French. Something about a _branleuse_ and _pisse-froid_ , which Sombra filed away under her list of vulgarities for future use.

Moira ignored the comment, remaining crouched over her. As she draped a towel across Amélie’s shoulders, she asked, “How are you feeling? And spare me the sass. It bores me.”

Amélie coughed and then spat with a grimace. “Cold.”

Moira hummed a thoughtful note deep in her chest. She stroked the backs of her fingers against Amélie's brow, testing her temperature while also brushing aside a strand of wet hair that clung to her face. “Yes, that is to be expected. A low internal body temp is ideal, especially so soon after a genetic re-integration. Any higher and the DNA will denature. You should avoid hot showers and direct sunlight for a few days.”

She straightened, and when Amélie clutched the towel around her for warmth like a blanket, Moira snapped, “Don't do that. The towel is only to dry you off.”

Her movement sluggish and shaky, Amélie began to rub the towel across her face and shoulders. From this angle, the camera could not capture Moira's face apart from the slope of her angular cheek. After a moment of tense impatient silence, Moira snatched the towel from Amélie's hands and growled, “I'll do it. On your feet.”

When Amélie stood, shivering before her, Moira dried her off with disinterested efficiency, every motion quick and sharp and economical. Then, she tossed the damp towel at Amélie, who flinched. “Get dressed. You’re needed in the field.”

Sombra half expected Moira to point to a rack of surgical gowns in the corner, but instead she waved her hand in the direction of a supply cabinet off-screen. Wrapping the towel around herself, Amélie strode out of Sombra’s field of view. There followed the faint creak of hinges. Moira did not watch her dress or indeed seem to take any interest in Amélie at all. Instead, she pulled a jumble of data from the tank onto her tablet, thumbing through its contents with a contemplative hum.

“What is the date?” Amélie asked from the side.

Moira did not look up from her screen, which washed over her face with a pale light. “Does it matter?”

Sombra didn’t have to see Amélie to know she was scowling; the frown was in her tone. “Who needs killing this time?”

“If you’re that eager for a rush, I have plenty of epinephrine,” Moira said dryly, gesturing with her tablet towards another supply cabinet set flush against the line of the far wall.

The mic struggled with Moira’s voice, but picked up on the barest sweep of cloth against skin as Amélie dressed out of sight. “You only let me out when there’s a mark. So, who is it?”

“Is that what you think? That all I want is for people to die?”

“Don’t you?” Amélie shot back, far more bold than Sombra would have been if she’d just been let out of a tank filled with experimental yellow goo.

With a disdainful sniff, Moira placed her tablet aside, turning so that her narrow features were held in sharp profile. “Don’t be daft. There are larger stakes at hand than the lives of a few lousy politicians and godless omnics.”

Silence filled the room after that declaration. Sombra held her breath and checked that she was still recording.

“Why couldn’t you have picked someone else?” Amélie whispered. “Anyone else.”

Moira tapped at her chin, studying Amélie with an aloof poise. “What one hand giveth, the other taketh away,” she said after a moment. “I chose you because you are a prime example of your species. Where anyone else would have succumbed, you persevered. You fought. You’re still fighting. It is reflected in your eyes as well as in your data charts. Once the procedure well and truly works on you, I’ll know it can work on anyone.

Briefly, the video feed fuzzed over as Moira moved, and Sombra hit a few buttons, swearing furiously under her breath as she tried to stabilise the footage. Moira was still talking by the time Sombra managed to correct the interference.

“We have taken great strides, you and I. And we will take many more. In the pursuit of perfection, there are inevitable sacrifices, and I will not stop until I have unlocked your true potential. The contributions of your body to science are the foundations upon which I will remake this world and its inhabitants.”

As she’d spoken, Moira had drawn closer to the table with the artifacts. She did not pick through them, or idly peruse, or even sweep them aside entirely, as Sombra had expected. Instead, without hesitation, she reached out and plucked the bug from its hiding place. Clear as day. As if she'd known it was there all along.

The image on the screen swung round until Moira held the microscopic fish-eye lens up to her face. A chill crawled down Sombra's spine. Moira was looking at her through the screen with that sickly grin of hers, pinching the camera between her fingers, and the quality of the image was rapidly deteriorating, like a roll of antique nitrate film set alight by the tip of a cigarette. The air around Moira seemed to darken. Or perhaps she seared so brightly that everything else faded into colourless shadow. Her coppery hair was flame-touched. Her eyes bled light and darkness, both black and radiant all at once. She was suspended in motion. She blurred and flickered at the edges. When she spoke, the microphone transformed her words into an echoing slurry of sound.

“I will found a kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven. And we must all play our parts. After all -” Moira smiled into the camera, baring her sharp teeth, her varicoloured gaze lidless, hypnotic, and piercing directly into Sombra as if they were standing in the same room, “-each of us exists to serve a higher purpose.”

She crushed the device between her fingers, and Sombra’s screen crackled with a static that continued to flicker with the fading afterimage of eyes that burned like fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Sombra is very loosely based upon the Invisible Man; Amélie is based upon Mina Harker; and Gabe is based upon Dracula.
> 
> 2) the Greek letters α and ω: also usually shown as A and Ω. More commonly known as "Alpha" and "Omega."
> 
> 3) now that I've finished my book, I should have more time to work on this. You can expect more regular updates.


End file.
